Hmmm, I wonder What Dalia Mazor Thinks About Me- Maya Becker

Hmmm, I wonder What Dalia Mazor Thinks About Me

By Maya Becker

Miri Nishri’s exhibit is captivating in the same way we like to read about how each celebrity rung in the Millennium. It’s the accomplishment of a talk show producer that managed to lock down an attractive panel of stars; the success of a publicist that brought a ton of celebrity’s to a party. And this isn’t meant to be a derogative depiction, but further proof that selecting the right participants is enough to do the trick.

300 people across Israel and the world received a small wooden box with a “Miri’s Embryo Distribution” sticker on it, a drawing of a fetus inside it, and a series of questions: “Is this your baby? Will you be willing to accept your paternity of the child?”. In the accompanying letter, Miri Nishri explained to the recipient that he was allowed to respond in what ever way he saw fit, and all the responses she received back – letters, drawings, objects, poems, photos, essays, videos – she will be displaying at the Kibbutz Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Nishri hasn’t invented anything new in terms of genre. Her mailing project is a continuation of an ongoing artistic interest that has been going on, in one-way or another, for a very long time. Mail art started with Dada and Surrealism and was very prevalent among conceptual art. Tamar Getter sent letters to Joseph Beuys in the 1970s, in which she asked him to send her a coat and slippers; Daniel Zack addressed some personal questions to different recipients (“Am I a good artist?”, “What do you think of me?”, Why do you love me?”, etc.). Nishri’s main achievement is a curatorial one – the way in which she managed to gain the cooperation of several key players from different fields spanning a wide cultural range, and created a varied exhibit that includes dozens of interesting responses. It’s the accomplishment of a talk show producer that managed to lock down an attractive panel of stars; the success of a publicist that brought a ton of celebrity’s to a party. And this isn’t meant to be a derogative depiction, but further proof that selecting the right participants is enough to do the trick.

Free from the need to present some sort of artistic message, Nishri’s exhibit is simply an intriguing exhibit, in the innocent, everyday, sense of the word. It’s interesting in the same way we like to read about how each celebrity rung in the Millennium, or where the celebrity homes are, or what it would be like to spend an hour inside John Malkovich’s mind. That’s why it’s curious to read what Professor Adi Tsemah thought about Nishri’s fetus (“This is not my child – he has no sign of influence over my philosophical work”), what Aharon Shabtai wrote her back (“I don’t identify with blind fetusness such as this. We need to make sure people can earn a living, and that there’s justice, even for Arabs living in the ghettos”), what Dganit Berst had written (“Has the impossible actually happened? Has passion finally bore its fruits?”), and what Amos Oz, Natan Zach, Assad Azi, Rony Somek, Ariel Hirshfeld, Roberto Benini and the Dalai Lama thought. These are the celebrities of the spiritual world, and Nishri managed to get them all in the same room together.

Not that Nishri’s project is barren conceptually speaking – this is an exhibit that could easily feed feminist discussion about the relationships between the sexes, discussion on the topic of the relationship between the art world and the audience, about relationships in the virtual age, etc. – but before we even start debating these subjects, specifically because these are the right roads to travel down when in comes to art, it’s as important to praise the exhibit’s playful and alluring core and to admit that it’s an appealing exhibit, one that you’re moist likely to spend  more time at than in others. Everyone’s played pretend – they filled out forms, attached a stamp, made things up. The package arrived. And the temptation that this game offers an element of gossip; who participated in the game and who sent what and what everyone’s handwriting looked like and wasn’t it obvious that Ron Pundak would send an article about Palestinian babies that had been killed in the occupied territories, and that Moshe Ron would quote Derrida and Phillip Rantzer would send a teddy bear inside a box. Nishri’s project is the continuation of an ongoing close and personal subject (her previous solo exhibit was titled “Water Breaking”), but our interest in the exhibit has everything to do with its participants, which doesn’t necessarily relate to to artistic appreciation, and Nishri’s fetus’ have never been so popular.

Nishri is somewhat like a sick child who stayed home in bed and all the kids in her class sent her drawings and letters so she wouldn’t feel sad and alone. She nagged at all of them to accept her into their families, asked for their attention; and for a whole month she gets to be at the center of attention, to walk around a gallery and boast – rightfully so – at all the gifts she received from the most popular kids in class.